resist
by chezchuckles
Summary: for the #castle28 project started on the castleficmentors tumblr. Prompt: "I can't believe you did this! I didn't ask you to do any of this!" My take turned to something that's a Handmaid's Tale meets McCarthyism era blacklisting.
1. Chapter 1

**#resist**

* * *

 _for the #castle28 project started on the castleficmentors tumblr_

 _Prompt: "I can't believe you did this! I didn't ask you to do any of this!"_

* * *

"I know," he says. His voice still sounds like it's been through a cheese grater, and the scarred line around his neck isn't fading. The bruises went from livid purple to yellow to black, and that was six months ago.

"Rick," she says softly. But the kids are coming down the tunnel after her, doing their best to be quiet, boots against corrugated metal. They'll be here in moments. "It's too much. We can't afford to waste resources."

"It's her birthday," he answers, still not looking at her. He's balancing one last cardboard box on the pyramid, a veritable rainbow tower in what passes for their living room these days. "Besides, I used coin to purchase all of the materials. Nothing that can't be reused either."

She frowns as she takes a slow look around their cramped space. These were the Prohibition tunnels behind The Old Haunt, deep in the recesses of the city's old sewer system, smelling of damp and stone, alcohol and, impossibly, old books. He has, in true Rodgers fashion, managed to create a shiny rainbow tower from an amalgamation of plastic, cardboard, and aluminum. _Clean_ , too. All of it. From the shimmering curtains of curling plastic to the walls of reinforced stripes, not piece of their daughter's magical playland looks like trash.

Which is a miraculous step up from where they've been all morning.

Rick has reimagined their lair. She doesn't know where he got everything, so little does he travel to the surface in daylight hours, but like he always does, he's managed the extraordinary.

Streamers of blue and purple plastic bags, carefully washed by hand and tied end to end, are strung up from the wood and brick rafters. He's turned on every light source they own, strategically placing the LEDs against the walls to give it the look of an underground aurora, an otherworldly surrealism that makes it seem they're anywhere but here.

He's created a tower out of cardboard boxes, and as she peeks inside, she realizes it's a fairy tale castle, built from scraps and painted with God knows what to resemble set decoration.

Martha would be proud, she thinks, but she doesn't say it. He still hasn't talked about what happened.

"Rick," she sighs, gripping the bag she spent four hours carefully collecting just to save coin for things wholly more necessary. Like medicine for their daughter if she falls sick. Like vitamins to supplement their dearth of fresh vegetables and fruits. Her kid has never tasted a banana. "Rick, I know you want to make it special..."

His fingers twitch at his sides, but he won't look at her. "Her birthday. It was one of the last... of our good days."

Kate drops the rucksack with its meager scavenge, steps into his body carefully. He flinches anyway, but he draws his arms around her when she presses in close. She kisses the scar at his neck where they got him, held him for months, collared like an animal. "You're here. Every day you're here is one of our good days."

He grunts and tightens his arms around her. His nose buries in her hair, which can't smell that great after crawling through landfill and then the sewer system of New York.

"This was a good day," he says finally. "She was - and is - a gift. I want her know it. To _feel_ like more than an inconvenience. I want her to have something special."

"Okay, okay," she hushes. Not an inconvenience, but how precarious it all is.

No, he's right. A day where their daughter doesn't feel her life is so precarious might be exactly what they all need.

Castle clutches at her shoulder. "Is she coming or what?"

"Alexis has her," Kate answers softly. "They were replacing the cover on the tunnel access."

"Good girls," he murmurs. "Strong girls. Glad she's yours, you know. Otherwise I..."

Raising a child in an underground world is ugly, a thing most often filled with hardship, heartache. And yet their daughter seems perfectly formed for this life.

It's a miracle she's so well-adjusted. Another miracle she loves to play at scavenge or make her clothes out of her mother's old pieces. Miracles abound in their daughter, but it won't happen again.

"It is a special day," she murmurs, drawing her arm just a little tighter. It brings her hips flush with his and he lifts an eyebrow. She resists a smile. "Which is why you'll be happy to hear I appropriated another box for our more private celebration later."

He gives a chuckle and squeezes her, but she snakes out of his grip and returns to the bag. She scoops out a box of condoms, shakes it, and gives him a lascivious grin.

Rick tsks her. "Did Alexis witness your score?"

"She's the one who found the clinic."

His face paints carefully neutral, as it always has when it comes to the efforts of the Resistance. "Great. Well."

"She invited Marco tonight too."

He winces but says nothing in judgment. It's only his paranoia, the PTSD rearing its ugly head. Marco is a good guy, strong, and he went through the same terror as her husband. If he wants to hitch his wagon to theirs, Kate is all for it.

Raising a child underground is ugly, and they can use all the adult help they can get.

She still hopes to find Ryan and his wife one of these days. And those sweet kids. She doesn't know what she'll find when she does, but-

At least Javier died for something. Saved Rick's life, and Marco's, and got them out of there. Scarred, battered, haunted - but alive.

Castle's face is a flat plane of nothing. No affect, no spark.

"Stop thinking about it," she tells him, because if she is, then he definitely is too. "It's Lily's birthday. And you went to all this trouble. Look how beautiful you've made it look for her."

They've had little contact with raiders, and minimal ingress from the outside world. Not even the Resistance has made it this far into the bowels of the old system, sticking to the subway tunnels and closed up lines common to urban legend.

But this is... beyond some hiding place behind a wall.

A little screech sends her head around. Their dark-haired Lily claps both hands over her mouth, eyes wide, as Alexis follows her out of the tunnel. The little girl is alternating between horror for her echoing noise and elation at the whimsy on display.

"You're okay," Kate reassures her. "Wasn't even close to loud enough. Besides, it's your birthday."

The little girl drops her hands with a shy, pleased smile, and she reaches for her daddy to pick her up. " _My_ birthday?"

Rick beams - his whole face transforms really - and he lifts her into his arms, smothers her in kisses. "Your birthday, my little warrior queen."

"Daddy," she gasps, laughing and squeezing his neck, careless with Castle's injuries in a way she almost never is. Kate darts forward to unwrap the little girl's arms, her heart thudding painfully, but Castle lifts a hand from Lily's back to stay her.

He looks in control; he looks like he's more than managing.

He looks to be at peace.

"Happy fourth birthday, Lil." He buries her in a hug, cheek to cheek, the last of his words lost to Lily's ears alone.

Kate stands just outside their circle, alone. She birthed this girl, but Rick raised her. Kate nourished her, and she might now teach her the essentials for survival, but Castle is the one who builds Lily her own worlds.

And then Alexis slips up to Kate's side and wraps an arm around her waist, enfolding.

It's okay; they're okay.

This is a good day.

 **#**

 **A/N:** This story will be multi-chapter, but conceptual in style. Each chapter might not directly follow the next chronologically, but might be instead episodic, relating another slice of Castle and Beckett's resistance life.

If you're struggling as a writer or just need a little advice every now and then, check out a new blog I'm spearheading with an excellent team of Castle fanfic writers (who shall remain nameless). It's the castleficmentors tumblr. Submit a question and have one of the mentors answer, or peruse a few articles or previous answers regarding the writing process. Follow us for more, including the #castle28 round-up.


	2. Chapter 2

**#resist**

* * *

If she thinks too much about it, the choices she made begin to crowd her. She does not know how she might have done it differently.

An she would not change their family for the world.

But Espo's death still weighs on her, and if her, then Rick must carry it all the more. A responsibility to resist, to fight back, despite having a now-four year old looking to them for safety and security. Maybe the word isn't _despite_ but _because_. Her daughter is four; this is not the world they want for her.

But the Resistance is dangerously unwieldy, loose-lipped, and poorly organized. The Resistance is what got Castle taken in the first place. They stay away from the so-called Resistance.

"Mommy," Lily calls from the other side of the room. Once upon a time, the exposed brick was a selling feature of a modern-industrial New York City apartment. Now it's the dingy backdrop to her daughter's birthday party. "Mommy, look."

Kate switches on her smile like a lamp. Just for Lily, their delicate flower who is turning out much hardier and stronger than her parents ever expected. "What did you get, sweetheart?"

Lily holds out a little booklet in her hands. "Daddy made for me." She clutches the booklet back to her chest, her pride so clear it shines. "My own book. I can practice my name. And write my animal stories. It's all mine."

Kate finally slides inside the celebration, allowing herself to ease up now that she's paused to remember how they got here. "Your very own. How special." She gathers Lily's long, dark hair off her shoulders, combs her fingers through it. "Did Daddy say he would help?"

Lily's head tilts back at the tug on her hair. She gives her mother a serious, somehow earnest face. "I don't need help."

"No, of course not," she smiles, finds Rick watching them with that knowing smirk. He's already sinking into one of the shabby couches, exhaustion showing up in his eyes despite his amusement. She flips Lily's hair into a bun, releases it with a switch at her ear. "Since you're the birthday queen, you should sit in Daddy's lap, have him make you a crown."

Lily's face lights up with interest and she runs to Castle, her handmade booklet clutched to her chest. She interposes her body between his knees and peers at him earnestly. "Daddy?" she asks, somehow hesitant, her voice so tentative that it almost seems to go up with wonder. "Do you think I'm much taller now?"

Kate's heart flips and Castle leans in, places a hand on her head as if measuring. "I think you must be. The last thing I knew, you were a tiny baby who fit all right against my forearm."

Lily gives him a beaming smile, clearly pleased. "Since I'm bigger, you can make me a crown out of all my pretty wrapping papers."

"I can and I shall," he says grandly, reaching out to pluck her up and settle her on his lap.

Kate can see him relax finally, sinking back into the sheet-covered couch, too short for his long body so that his knees are hulking icebergs for anyone to crash into. And she chooses to crash. Right into those knees, into his body, so that she even jostles Lily.

He grunts in surprise, lifts his eyes to her. Kate leans over and lightly runs her fingers in his hair at his nape, kisses him until Lily protests.

"My crown, Daddy. Mommy, stop it. You distracting him."

She smiles against Castle's lips, lifts. "My apologies. Here's your wrapping paper." She hands the stack over to Castle and sinks down beside him, pressing herself thigh to thigh. He smells like brick dust and paper, and somehow that's a winning combination.

"Here, Daddy, my second favorite is blue." Red is her first favorite, but red scraps are impossible to find.

"I do know that," Castle softly chides. "Stop squirming. Your bony bottom is poking me."

Lily giggles and ducks in against Castle's chest so that he has to lift his arms away to keep from messing up his creation.

It still amazes Kate how something as simple as paper-folding can create this hush and quiet in the midst of their daily struggle, their ragged living.

Rick has still not told her who he learned origami from, but she knows it was someone in the detention center. She knows he usually only folds when he's anxious and riding one of those waves of PTSD she's so familiar with herself.

He's not now. No. But he folds their daughter a crown made of the blue-dyed paper scraps, his wide fingers somehow nimble and quick, infusing the well-worn soft page with strength and stiffness in every crease.

Kate watches, because she, like Lily, is arrested by the beauty of this small thing, and by its significance.

When Rick crowns Lily with those interlocked links of folded blue diamonds, it's as if he's anointed the whole room with magic.

#

They have cake. Kate cobbled together the recipe from things her mother attempted over the years - Johanna was a 'dash-of-this, dash-of-that' kind of baker - but it's worked better than she hoped.

"Is this-" Rick tilts his head, eyes widening. "Citrus?"

She bites her lip, glances to Lily who swings her feet against the wooden facing of the bar. They've moved upstairs, the blackout curtains pulled inside The Old Haunt, now that it's past curfew. Lily digs her elbows into the bar and leans forward to lick frosting from her piece of cake.

"Kate, is it lemon or orange?"

"Orange," she answers finally. Winces. "Orange peel."

"Oh." He deflates for a moment, but then holds out his fingers to feed the birds.

She does, completing the peck even as her throat closes up. Feed the birds. How long has it been?

"Still have trouble getting fruit," she says. "But I have a guy with apples." When she winks at him he grins, and it almost makes the scar at his neck seem insignificant. "I mashed apples for the sweet, also keeps the cake moist."

"I love it, Mommy." Lily leans into her and licks her lips of frosting.

Kate bows over her and kisses those sweet lips. "Mm, I'm so glad, baby."

"I'm not really a baby," she says, a little shake of her head in remonstrance. "Am I?"

"No, I suppose not. Up after curfew. Writing your own name. Definitely bigger."

Lily sits up straight with pride, glancing between her parents.

Alexis and Marco, both eating cake with their fingers out of tumblers (they don't have plates up here, and the less they have to clean up the better), approach Lily as one. As if they're more together than either she or Rick have known.

"Hey there, squirt," Marco says, kissing Lily's cheek even as she squirms on the stool. "I made you something too. It's to go with your book." He sets down the tumbler containing his cake and reaches into the cargo pocket of his pants, his dark hands flashing like fish darting through the shallows. When he withdraws the long, thin, wrapped package and hands it to her, Kate nudges the cake away from Lily so she can properly thank Marco.

"Ooh, what did you make me?" her little girl says, taking the wrapped gift and handling it with such care - and with sparkling eyes.

"Open it up, you'll see." Marco, still grinning, steps back to give her room, though it's probably for Rick's sake. The two of them went through it together; he understands better than most her husband's strange bursts of claustrophobia.

Lily carefully unwinds the twine, twisting it around her own wrist to save for later (how that hurts Kate, to watch her daughter scavenge, even as her pride flares, knowing that her daughter is a smart girl, a clever thing). Lily unfolds the remnant paper from the package, smoothing it out against her chest, unwrinkling each sheet of what must have been a magazine. Those pages will come in handy when Rick resumes lessons tomorrow, teaching her to read and now - to write.

"Oh, they're all the colors!" Lily exclaims, sifting through the various writing implements in her hands. A red sharpie stands out - Lil's favorite color - and it makes Kate's heart clench with gratitude to the man, giving such a precious resource to a four year old.

"How lovely," Kate murmurs, touching the tips of each one in her daughter's hands. She looks up to Marco, speechless, finds Marco looking at Rick for approval.

Her husband finally nods, his head bobbing a little recklessly with emotion. Marco relaxes and lets out a breath, picks up his tumbler of cake in a expressive gesture. He smiles at Alexis, and Kate wonders if this is new, unfolding right this moment before her eyes, or if it has only been kept underground all this time, just like their lives.

"All the colors, Mommy, look. _Look._ "

Kate glances down. A yellow colored pencil, a green crayon, a blue pen, a black pen... various tools in various colors, even a red crayon too. It seems impossible, and too valuable. No amount of orange-peel-flavored cake frosting can make up for a poor artist giving away his tools to a child.

Rick reaches out slowly to Marco and squeezes his good shoulder. "This is..."

"Mommy, did you see?" Lily pesters.

Marco shakes his head. "Only what she deserves. She's more creative than me down here."

Kate finally answers her daughter's insistent bid for attention. "Lily, honey, I see. You have your very own rainbow now."

"For my very own book," she sighs. "I can make so many animals, and Daddy will help me name them, and write down all their things."

All day, her daughter creates magical animals, fantasy beasts, and at night, she spins elaborate stories from her cot until she puts herself to sleep.

In all of her stories, the magical creatures sweep the city clean and bring back the world as she never knew it.

#


	3. Chapter 3

**#resist**

* * *

Kate wakes alone in the darkness, cold, and puts a foot out over the mattress, feeling her way. She slips out of bed in silence, stands and pulls on a sweatshirt to combat the chill. She pushes aside the pocket door that Marco built for them, smooth glide, soundless, and steps into the main room. Lily is asleep on her cot near their door, curled up still in her paper crown and the red dress Alexis made for her.

A simple sheath, but how excited Lily was for new clothes. Given half the chance, their girl would be a little fashionista.

The main room is otherwise still, and even though she's on a hunt for her mercurial husband, she stops and kneels beside Lil's bed. Kisses the smooth forehead with her eyes closed. Breathes in the scent of orange peel frosting and bath time soap.

She never meant for Lily to make it to four years old without a little brother or sister, but there's no way to have that conversation with Rick right now. No way to explain that there are resistance clinics and contacts she's cultivated specifically for Lily's sake, that they have friends they can trust.

Kate lifts to silent feet and scans the room, heads for the door to their little camp kitchen, jury rigged to meet their needs: to give a little girl a good breakfast every morning and to have some semblance of home. Rick has done most of the work; as handy-less as he used to be, the kitchen is nevertheless his domain, and it's here she finds him, eating a piece of cake.

"Hey," she mouths, wriggling her fingers at him.

He nods and rises to open the little ice house, draws the cake pan out to cut her a piece. She sits down near his place at the bench Marco made, puts her back against the brick wall that Rick padded with a kind of headboard. Comfortable. Lily likes to draw at this table. It bears the scars from her various projects.

Castle sets a plate before her and hands her a fork which she takes with a smile, their fingers brushing, eyes colliding in the near-darkness. They have a lone LED lamp set near the back counter and its glow barely reaches her at the table.

The pitch black of this constant nighttime that is the underground was the hardest thing for them to get used to. A series of hot plates for a stove, a mattress and box springs on the floor, clothes washed by hand - all could be adapted to within a few months. But she still finds the absolute darkness troubling, even if Lily moves through it like a cat.

Rick settles beside her once more, shoulder to shoulder, and she uses her thumb and finger to pinch off a piece of mostly frosting.

"Tastes the same," he murmurs under his breath.

She shakes her head _no_ but Rick grumbles at her. He doesn't count though. His taste buds have changed, ever since he was detained; he says nothing tastes quite right.

"I like it," he mumbles. "The orange is amazing."

She smiles because he never has a preference these days and she could tell by his face this evening that he really _does_ like it. It's almost better than Lily's excitement over having real cake.

"Can you get more?" he asks hesitantly.

"For you, anything."

"Oh, God, don't say that," he chokes out, turning his face towards her. She startles when his forehead crashes to her cheek, but she cups the side of his face. She can't be sorry for promising him things, especially when having him seems so precious.

 _Precarious_. A matter of two extra letters and yet it's more accurate for how this feels sometimes. Like she might not get him back, and she already has gotten him back.

"Is it hard to get cake mix?" he whispers.

"Mm, possible but it's the eggs."

"Embargo is a bitch," he sighs.

She nods, licking frosting from her fingers.

"I was contacted by _Osceola_ again."

Kate freezes. The extra thump of her heart in response to his quiet pronouncement makes her wary of ruining anything. "Did they... want you to write or want you to enlist?"

"The freedom magazine," he sighs. "I wouldn't enlist. You know that."

"Things change," she offers, a little helplessly. She _would_ enlist. In a second. Because of him. He wouldn't because of her, and Lily. Same priorities, different responses.

"Things don't change that much."

"What do they want then?" she says, diverting them from their usual argument. Not tonight, not when she's storing up her points for the real fight, for when their box of condoms runs out and she just wants him. Wants them and the life that was taken away.

"They're asking for a boots on the ground piece."

"How much are they willing to pay you?" coin has been their one saving grace. It was his idea, back in the beginning, to liquidate much of his cash and savings into coin; step one in his survival plan.

She thought it was crazy. Ludicrous. Survival of what? And then California seceded, and the wall, and the massacre in Times Square, and just like that he was right. They don't have enough, of course, because prices are incredibly inflated with the international embargo, but if he hadn't done it-

Where would they be?

She reminds herself of that every day. _He was right_. Pay attention, listen, don't dismiss his caution even when it seems entirely unlike the man she used to know. He's been right, almost every step of the way. Every step but the one that saw him arrested and detained.

"Rick. How much?"

"Enough," he says finally. A hand scraping down his face which says he doesn't want to do the piece. "It's what I usually draw in a year."

"Oh my God," she gasps.

They sit in silence for a long minute, just staring at each other. He looks away first, rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands like a child. "I have to do it, don't I."

Her heart twists for him. "What exactly is it." She tests the feeling on her tongue, probing for her weaknesses. Is it the money that makes her feel light-headed? For Lily's sake. Rick's name is still on the blacklist; hers is too, now, they found out last month. "Boots on the ground means what?"

He drops his hands, flat to the table. A thumb smooths incessantly over one of the gouges made by Lily's scissors. "Means I'm Jameson Rook for a year," he answers.

Her lips go numb. "That's enlisting."

"Embedded journalist," he says, one shoulder shrugging. The scar at his neck gives thick shadows in the LED-light glow. It makes her own throat feel tight. "I'd be interviewing, following up, not front lines."

"Still _there_ ," she says. But she's not afraid; she wants to go. She wants to kiss Lily's face good night and then leave hand-in-hand with her husband to wage war in the darkness, come home every morning with a sense that the roughness and the consequences are reclaiming the world for her daughter.

"Still there, yeah, and on a list somewhere no doubt."

Lists are what got them to this point.

Lists are what the Resistance is so _bad_ at keeping secret.

An innocent list of activists and donors, which - when passed through enough hands - morphs from a group of the likeminded to Resistance workers to blacklisted malcontents to traitors to the nation. Traitors are stolen from their beds and dragged out of their homes in front of their one year old daughters. Traitors undergo extreme rendition in an undisclosed location for a year, lost to a system that's already collapsing.

"You don't have to do it," she tells him, dropping her hand to cover his. Curling her fingers around it protectively. The scar is a twisted shadow at his throat where they hanged him, hanged him from his neck to find out what he knew. Which was nothing. "You don't _have_ to do anything other than live with me."

He gives her a tired flash of a smile for that. Her mantra for three weeks while he burned with fever and Marco kept apologizing to her for their blood-soaked escape. _Lo siento, lo siento,_ a kind of antiphony to her own _just live, just live, just live._

He lived. He's here. The scar around his neck is a vivid reminder that there are things she doesn't know about his year in the detention center, violent and dark things he won't speak of. She's read every piece he's been commissioned to write, and she has pieces of it, one thing here or there, but never the whole.

She's not sure she could hear all of it and still face the day. She's not sure of any of this.

"You don't have to do it," she tells him again. "I trust your instincts. You-"

"Real oranges," he interrupts. A finger scoots the plate with his half-eaten cake away from him. "Instead of orange peel."

"So the fuck _what_?" she growls. "You are alive, you're here. I won't have my daughter grow up without you."

"Or without you," he sighs.

"No," she agrees, though that one has always, from the beginning, been in flux. She was a cop; cops flirt with the statistics. Now she's a scavenger and contact broker, making deals and putting people together to get things done, and very much outside of the law. Still flirting with statistics, really.

"But she might anyway," Castle adds quietly. "That's the reality, one she seems to know and take as matter of fact. Ever since they came for me."

Lily's nightmares are merely dreams. She wakes in the night, but she's never afraid. _It's what happened_ , she said to them one night. And before that, crawling into bed with her mother, not quite two years old, _I check on you_. Checking to see if her mother was still there.

"She's not scared," Kate offers.

"She's too much her mother to be scared. Thank God for small favors."

She shakes her head, remembering vividly how fear has lived with her for decades now. Long before all this. "Remember when you disappeared on our wedding day?" She sighs. "Well, no, you don't, but when you woke in the hospital and-"

"And you were furious with me? And you wouldn't even smile."

"I'm sorry," she whispers, dipping her cheek to his shoulder.

"I know. It's no one's fault. It's long past history."

"But it's not long past," she murmurs. "It seems to be cyclical. When they arrested you and then blocked me from even finding you - the runaround, every day, making phone calls and physically going to the phony addresses they kept giving me for that detention center-"

"I know."

"It just felt-"

"I know," he interrupts again. "You need a crusade."

"I'm so damaged," she whispers, tilting her face into his arm. Breathing.

"We're all damaged. Even - even our daughter. At least it makes us well-equipped to live like this."

Well, that just aches.

He pets her hair and presses his lips to the top of her head. She lets his shirt soak up the beginning of tears, swallows roughly to keep the rest at bay. Once she starts, where does it stop?

They're all damaged.

He sighs. "I have to do it."

"Then I'm going with you."

#


	4. Chapter 4

#resist

#

#

Marco won't go.

It's something like relief, the feeling that combs its fingers through her body. A chill and then a giving way, as if to sleep. "You'll stay the night then," Rick says and it's not an offer, and they all know it.

"Dad," Alexis chides. Her cheeks are pink.

"I will," Marco answers, shrugging with long-held agreement. He gives Alexis a look as if for permission, then faces both of them, Rick and Kate. "Already am, really."

Castle doesn't say anything to that, and a faint sliver of unease goes across Marco's face. But Kate grasps Marco by the arm, squeezing. "We know. Is this your way of making it official, then?"

Marco's turn to blush pink, and Alexis steps into his back, bumping her nose and forehead to the planes of the man's shoulders. Their eyes meet over and around the man and Alexis isn't blushing any longer. "Official, sure." She's looking at her father now. "He won't join, Dad. Ever."

"I said the same," Castle sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. Kate half turns to him, censure on her lips that she doesn't speak, not looking at him. He shakes off his own little funk and grins instead. "Well, good. Officially. You'll stick close tonight, though, in case-"

"Um," Alexis interrupts, slides around Marco to put herself between them and him. "Officially, he's moving in, guys. Not just sticking around tonight."

Lily, from her nest near the door must be listening in like crazy, because she gives a little gasp and tumbles out of bed. Runs to them. "Marco, Marco, Marco-"

The man stumbles to catch her, but he does, drawing Lily up into his arms. "I guess you're okay with that, squirt?"

"I'm okay, I'm more than okay," Lily breathes, squeezing him around the neck. She turns in Marco's arms and waves to Rick, as if shooing him. "Go have a date, Daddy. Marco and Lex will baby-sit me."

Castle grunts, shooting Kate a dark look. But she's oddly delighted. "A date," she muses, leaning in to kiss Lily's cheek. "I think I like the sound of that. But you were supposed to be in bed, bug."

"I can go back," she says, almost imperious. "Marco will take me."

"Hmm," Alexis says, lifting an eyebrow. She shares a look with Kate that makes them both smile, but Marco is already carrying the queen back to her litter.

Castle watches, a hand at the back of his neck, as if arrested between frustration and adoration. Kate pats his back, scratching lightly until he looks at her. "Already done," she tells him. "She's been half in love with Marco since he brought us to you. Marco gave her back her daddy, so."

Castle's face flushes, and his hand goes to his neck, to the scar.

Alexis is watching them, not Marco putting Lily back to bed. "So have I," she offers. "Half in love with him since he came to get us." She has a shrug but she's smiling. "And I know you have to do this, but he can't. He's not made for it like you guys are."

"Made for it," Kate echoes, tasting ash on her tongue as she stares at Alexis. All those old obstacles rise up like ghosts, clammy.

"To risk," Alexis clarifies, shooting a look to her father and then back to Kate. "It's not a judgment or - it's what makes you special." She flushes but keeps going, but her eyes are on Kate, the whole time, just on Kate. "We stay home. You guys... do."

Castle rubs his throat but instead of looking to Lily, to their daughter being put to bed by someone else (and Kate feels that, keenly), he looks at her. He looks at Kate. "We do." He clears his throat, that old habit of strain and scars. "I guess it's a date. Beckett?"

Why does she feel elated?

Kate turns her back on Alexis, presses her body to Castle's until he embraces her in return. His lips against her ear, his heart beating somewhere in her throat. She needs him, she needs him. She needs this to be real.

"It's a date," she answers.

#


End file.
